Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund

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Deadline: November 18, 2026 (11:59PM EST)

SUBMISSION FORM

The Emerging Playwrights Fund (the “Fund”) is calling theatrical visionaries who are ready to push boundaries and captivate audiences through the intimate, limitless world of audio drama.

This is storytelling without walls. Your words, world-class performers, and millions of listeners waiting to be transported.

Who Should Apply

We're seeking early-career theatrical writers who craft immersive fictional experiences that engage, entertain, and inspire. We value diverse perspectives, innovative approaches to form, and stories that harness the unique intimacy and immediacy of audio storytelling. Whether your work explores internal worlds through sound, creates vivid landscapes through language, or experiments with narrative structure—if it pushes boundaries and demands to be heard, we want it.

For this cycle, we're particularly interested in original audio dramas in the following genres:

Action & Adventure including Mystery, Thrillers, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Core Fiction including Contemporary Fiction, Romance, and Literary Companion Pieces


About the Fund

Audible is a leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling. Since 2017, our theater initiative, which includes the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, has been built on one mission: to radically increase access to exceptional plays and performances.

The Emerging Playwrights Fund sits at the heart of that mission. We invest in and nurture self-identifying emerging playwrights—some of the most inventive, creative, and provocative storytellers working today. Through the Fund, we connect extraordinary performers with remarkable original work, amplifying new voices and bringing them to millions of listeners. To date, Audible Theater has commissioned 50 projects through the Fund. We support the creation of original dramatic work written with audio in mind, but theatrical in spirit—stories that live and breathe in the listener's imagination.


What the Fund Provides

Audible will select up to five applicants to receive a fee of $25,000 each to write and develop an original audio play. In addition to the fee, Audible may provide the selected applicants with creative and logistical resources to assist each artist and project, including but not limited to: development and production fees, casting expertise and talent budget, access to Audible’s state-of-the-art studio and production equipment.

Audible is dedicated to commissioning, developing, and producing work that reflects the diversity of our listeners and our world. We actively encourage submissions from emerging playwrights of all races, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, and backgrounds.

Your voice, amplified.

Submission Guidelines

One full-length script for an original play (in English language only) that represents your voice ("Script”). Submitted as a pdf or word doc

A professional biography (up to 300 words)

A pitch or summary for an original audio play (Action & Adventure OR Core Fiction preferred)

Please note, by submitting an application you will be directed to a third-party website (hosted by Accubate) and you agree to the applicable Audible and Accubate privacy notice(s).


Eligibility criteria

Any applicant over the age of 18, resident in US or UK may submit an application. Employees or independent contractors, or immediate family members (spouses, domestic partners, parents, grandparents, siblings, children, and grandchildren) or those living in the same household of employees or independent contractors of Audible Inc., including any of its affiliates (collectively, “Audible”), or any entity involved in any aspect of the administration of the Fund may not submit a Script for consideration, unless it is determined by Audible in its sole discretion in accordance with Audible’s then current policies and procedures that no conflict of interest exists in connection with accepting the relevant submission for consideration.